LIMA — Flu season has been more intense and severe than last years, said Melanie Amato, assistant director of communications for the Ohio Department of Health.
The culprit was a influenza variant identified as H3-N2 by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, she said. Flu season usually goes from October to May with the peak of hospitalization occurring at the end of Jan., Amato said.
“H3-N2 causes more severe symptoms and that leads to more people being hospitalized,” she said said.
Influenza vaccines are less effective against H3-N2 than other flu variants Amato said. Doctors intend for the flu vaccine to be at least 60 percent effective against influenza A and B variants.
“So, the one thing about the flu is it’s very unpredictable,” she said.
Six months before flu season begins in the United States, doctors are watching influenza outbreaks in foreign countries. They look for what strain variants of the virus are spreading across other countries and use that data to construct the flu vaccine for this country, Amato said.
This flu season, Ohio has seen a record number of people admitted to the hospital with flu symptoms. The Ohio Department of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and county health boards track how many patients are admitted to the hospital each year with flu symptoms, but they do not track flu symptoms related adult deaths, Amato said. Each health agency tracks flu symptom-related pediatric deaths.
Amato said there have been four pediatric deaths from the flu this year, one case each in Lucas, Summit, Montgomery and Cuyahoga Counties.
According to an obituary in Wednesday’s The Lima News, Steven W. Dotson, 60, of Lima, died Sunday of flu related complications.
Influenza symptoms include; fever, cough, sore throat, body ace, chills and fatigue, Amato said. Individuals infected with the flu virus can show all or part of those symptoms and should seek medical attention even if not all symptoms are visible. Vomiting and diarrhea are not symptoms of the influenza virus, pointing instead to a intestinal or stomach virus.
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